Prevented From Trading by MOJ Because They Did Not Understand What I Do

[entseo]

I am a website designer and optimizer with many years' experience. In 2010 I was told by the Ministry of Justice that I was, in fact, a claims management company (which I am not) and that I was not allowed to trade without a licence. I provided ample proof that I had no claims management experience or knowledge, and that my claims management websites were used for data collection purposes for my clients only (who were themselves licenced claims management companies).



So I applied for a licence and paid £400. Needless to say, I had great difficulty in filling in the application form as I know nothing about claims management (I have a recording of the conversation I had with an officer who was trying to help me fill out the form - he ended up saying things like "Well, just put a cross through it, then" and "Why are you applying for a licence if that isn't what you do?": the recording would be pure Monty Python if it wasn't so pathetic).

After a very long wait the licence was disallowed on the grounds that I did not have sufficient claims management knowledge (which I had been telling them all along!) and so they did not give me the licence - yet they kept my £400.

I was told by the MOJ officer that if I did not comply then I could be fined or sent to prison. He demanded to know who all my clients were (even my non-claims management clients). When I mentioned a client he hadn't heard of before he demanded to know why I hadn't informed him of this client. He phoned up at least two of my clients, who subsequently contacted me about it; one of them was clearly distressed at this treatment.

I had no idea that MOJ officers were allowed to behave like nazis, but this one clearly relished his role.



He told me to take down my claims management websites and this has cost me over £200,000 in lost income over the years. He complained about the 'branding' of my websites although it was clear that he did not know what he was talking about. When I complained afterwards, raised questions and made comparative statements about what they had done this officer suddenly went quiet and insisted I contact another department instead. It was as if he had suddenly realised what he had done.



Thousands of other people do the same as I do and yet they have never experienced this kind of treatment by the MOJ. In supplying data as an affiliate I was reassured time and time again that all I need to do was to state the licence details of my client (the claims management company) on my website and I would be covered by their own licence. This is what the law in my industry states and this is what I and many others like me have abided by for years. Many thousands of people do this. None of the affiliate managers I have spoken to had ever heard of this nonsense happening to anyone else.



I seek redress and realistic financial compensation, but how do I go about redressing this injustice?

Thanks,

Gordo

[wales01man]

Re: Prevented From Trading by MOJ Because They Did Not Understand What I Do

Consult a specialist Solicitor sounds like you are taking on the MOJ with a small budget for a large sum claimed

[enquirer]

Re: Prevented From Trading by MOJ Because They Did Not Understand What I Do

As Wales01man suggests, this requires the attention of a legal professional specilising in this area. In the meantime, have you made a formal complaint with the department itself (if not, do so, and copy your MP in on the correspondence)? Do you have any form of insurance that might fund a legal action?

[Amethyst]

Re: Prevented From Trading by MOJ Because They Did Not Understand What I Do

It sounds like you are acting as a introducer?




The requirements are set out in detail in the Compensation (Exemptions) Order 2007 but, in
practice, apply as follows –
A business may refer claims and will not require authorisation where:
• they provide no other regulated claims management activity, including advertising or
seeking out persons who may have a cause for a claim, or advising on a potential claim;
• the way they come across the case for referral is incidental to their main business i.e.
the claim must arise as a result or consequence of the business being carried out by the
introducer – not a separate feature of the business;
• the referral is made to an authorised business or legal practitioner; and
• the business is paid for no more than 25 referrals per calendar quarter.
All of these tests must be met for the business to be deemed exempt. Examples where a
business may fail to satisfy the ‘exempt introducer’ criteria include:
• A person advertises for personal injury business and passes under 25 cases a quarter on to
solicitors. (The business is advertising and so referring cases is not the only service provided).
• A person refers 50 cases a quarter to solicitors but no more than 25 to any one practice.
(The limit is on the total number of referrals not the number passed to any one solicitor or
authorised claims management business).
• A person refers very few personal injury claims but this is all the business does. (Claims
management activities form the main part of the business and referrals are not acquired
incidentally to other services provided).
This exemption is intended to apply to small scale introducers. If a business finds the volume test a
constraint then it should seek authorisation. It may well be the case that some solicitors and claims
management businesses will require their introducers to be authorised in their own right.
See the flowchart at Annex A below which can be used to assist your business in determining
whether it fulfils the criteria to be deemed an ‘exempt introducer’.

[entseo]

Re: Prevented From Trading by MOJ Because They Did Not Understand What I Do

Thanks to all who provided very useful input.

I will be preparing a Maladministration Claim against the Ministry of Justice as soon as I can.

Perhaps I should add that I had a similar case the year before (2009) with the late, unlamented Office of Fair Trading (OFT). It was a 'routine' updating of my consumer credit licence. They told me that I must take all my licensable websites down and that the process would only take 25 days maximum.

I took my websites down, warning them that if they were down for too long they would fall out of the search engines' index and would become worthless as nobody would see them.

There then began a series of astounding incompetent actions by OFT officers (including one accepting the task, doing nothing, going on holiday, coming back 10 days later and handing the task to another officer, not being able to add up, not being able to read a graph, criticising me for a non-compliant website only to discover that it was someone else's website, and many other events of sickening incompetence were demonstrated by the OFT officers almost on a daily basis).

Eventually I was allowed to put my sites back up. But it was 8 weeks later and my business was destroyed.

Even the final list of 'compliant websites' which they put on the public register was riddled with errors: over 50 mistakes in a 4-page document.

After several to-ing and fro-ing of denials by the OFT legal department (where they demonstrated yet more misunderstandings, gaps of knowledge and inability to read things like graphs and spreadsheets) they finally conceded that they were wrong. My accountant and I calculated that the destruction of my online business had cost me£ 850,000 in total, yet they awarded me a derisory sum under £40,000.

They also made me sign a gagging order so that I would not talk about this event to anyone, or mention any names.

I have wondered ever since, does this gagging order have any current substance or validity now that the OFT is no more?

I would really like to show the world the particular mixture of arrogance and stupidity demonstrated by our bureaucrats.

[Amethyst]

Re: Prevented From Trading by MOJ Because They Did Not Understand What I Do

Without knowing the ins and outs of your business, dealings with the OFT and MOJ, and presumably FCA, its going to be really hard to assist.

On that very over simplified flowchart where does your business sit? Are you a lead generator for an individual claims company or for multiple companies?

Maybe pm me a couple of URLS so I have a better idea what we are talking about.

[entseo]

Re: Prevented From Trading by MOJ Because They Did Not Understand What I Do

Thanks for your response, Amethyst. I'll go through the points you raise.

>>

Without knowing the ins and outs of your business, dealings with the OFT and MOJ, and presumably FCA, its going to be really hard to assist.

That's mainly the problem: the OFT and MOJ didn't know the ins and outs of my business either, even though I explained it to them in detail on many occasions! I haven't had any problems with the FCA yet, though my impression is that they are a bit more well-informed and robust in their approach than their predecessors.

>>On that very over simplified flowchart where does your business sit? Are you a lead generator for an individual claims company or for multiple companies?

I found the flowchart useful. From the top, I continued down vertically through the series of Nos. I did anticipate more than 25 conversions per quarter, but my sites were taken down before I had a chance to prove them. The only comparison I could make was with my previous UCA sites (unenforceable credit agreements) for which I was being paid up to 8 data sets per DAY. This was a thriving part of my business until the law changed (see the test cases by judges Carey and Waksman which altered the legal interpretation and which caused the market for such data to dry up). I had no doubt that I could make as much success - if not more - of the claims management sites, as I had made with my UCA sites, but I did not have the chance to do so because of the MOJ's instructions to take the sites down. I supplied data to about 4 or 5 different merchants/affiliate networks in the claims sector, as I recall. (All of these were astounded when I told them of the problems I was having with the MOJ; none of them had heard of any other affiliate being treated in this way.)

>>Maybe pm me a couple of URLS so I have a better idea what we are talking about.

Many were PPI reclaim sites - a HUGE market; much bigger than the UCA market. But my sites were all taken down and so the URLs would not resolve into an actual website.

Here are some of my URLs, nevertheless, so you can see the territory:

missold-life-insurance-policies.co.uk
missold--mortgages.co.uk
missold-payment-protection-insurance.co.uk
personal-injury-compensation--claims.co.uk
ppi--misselling.co.uk
ppi--refunds.co.uk
endowment-mortgage-compensation-claims.co.uk
income-protection-plan-compensation-claims.co.uk
isa-compensation-claims.co.uk
life-insurance-compensation-claims.co.uk
lump-sum-investment-compensation-claims.co.uk
missold-investment-compensation.co.uk

and there were several more. My job is to get these search terms to the top of the UK search engine listings. I believe I had most of the major search terms covered.

My success in the UCA sector was that I had the #1 position for the search queries write off debt, write off credit card debt and unenforceable credit card agreement. I never doubted that I could do the same with my newer claims management sites.

[Amethyst]

Re: Prevented From Trading by MOJ Because They Did Not Understand What I Do

Okay so you got those sites to the top of search engines, were they filled with affiliate links to claims companies or did you have a data entry form potential customers entered details in which you then sold on to various CMCs or fed directly to a specific CMC ? ie. were you marketing a particular CMC or lead farming ?

[Amethyst]

Re: Prevented From Trading by MOJ Because They Did Not Understand What I Do

Okay got it.

Presumably all your sites were along the same lines with relevant keywords and URLs

[Amethyst]

Re: Prevented From Trading by MOJ Because They Did Not Understand What I Do

Your privacy policy was massively inadequate ( in Nov 2010) as there's actually no information as to what you do with data entered into the form.

[Amethyst]

Re: Prevented From Trading by MOJ Because They Did Not Understand What I Do

Anyway that aside you have already had recompense from the MOJ of £40k, so presumably they admitted some kind of wrong doing ? and you feel it should have been more like £200k to £850k ? and you should have been able to put your websites back live. However this was back in 2011.

When did you receive the compensation and the 'gagging order' ?

[Amethyst]

Re: Prevented From Trading by MOJ Because They Did Not Understand What I Do

( I should probably disclaimer here that personally I cannot stand lead farmers particulary for PPI and UCA CMC firms but that aside you feel you have been poorly treated by the regulators and it appears they have admitted wrong doing and are looking for assistance with that )

[entseo]

Re: Prevented From Trading by MOJ Because They Did Not Understand What I Do

Thanks for your reply.

I think I may have accidentally misled you.

The MOJ did not award me £40,000; it was the OFT which awarded me that money at the same time as they admitted my Maladministration Claim (eventually, after lots of whining and counterclaims which they could not, of course, substantiate).

The sites I got to the top of the search engines were not the claims management sites I listed; they were the UCA sites (search terms I have bolded and italicised). I did not get a chance to get the claims sites to the top of the search engines because the MOJ told me to remove them before I could do anything with them.

As I did not get a chance to sell any claims management data I can only talk of my UCA experience. I had a webform on my site which collected data from my website visitors. Depending on the website, this UCA data went to one of two affiliate networks; I was instructed specifically what wording I should have on my sites, Privacy Policy, etc, by those clients; I was told it was totally compliant at the time by both sets of clients.

I wasn't familiar with the term 'lead farming' although I can guess what it means. It sounds a bit dodgy and 'shotgun approach' to me. SEO marketing is actually the gentlest and least intrusive way to make a living from marketing because there is no sales process involved and it is the opposite of sales in many ways: the customers come to your site; there is nothing I actively have to do once the site is at the #1 position. There is no hard sell because there doesn't have to be. It is totally non-intrusive. I don't chase ambulances, for example, and I don't much like people who do either. The affiliate networks sign up SEOs like me because we can get to those #1 positions, not because we are pushy or able to stick our foot in the door or phone people up at home with an unsolicited sales pitch, however clever or shrewd.

The wording of the privacy policy of the claims management sites were agreed by the affiliate networks at the time and so I complied with what they told me to write; I assumed at the time that this was compliant and not inadequate. Of course, I know nothing about claims management, so I don't know. But I assumed that my clients, as MOJ licenced entities, did know what they were doing and that is why I was following their instructions.

I received the compensation from the OFT and was made to sign the gagging order in June/July 2012. I would not have accepted that amount, but they had cut off my income as a result of their actions (which they knew) and their deliberations took so long that they depleted what savings I had (which they also would have been banking on) so that they knew I would have no option but to accept the money and sign, even though it was nothing like the sum of money which they had deprived me of through their sheer stupidity.

The OFT admitted my claim totally. My accountant and I calculated the total loss to be around £850,000, yet I was awarded just under £40,000 (which was taxed!). The point here in SEO terms is that, once the sites were de-indexed (because of the length of time they were down because of the OFT taking so long about things) they could never recover; they had become 'tainted'. I kept on trying to explain this to the OFT officers - I also used charts, graphs, spreadsheets and other data in support of what I was trying to tell them - but they blithely continued in the same idiotic vein until my site listings had disappeared from sight. They eventually admitted ALL of this in writing.

I have yet to approach the MOJ, but it is they who have caused a similar loss of income through their own antics.

What I don't understand is why was it only me who has experienced this. Of thousands of people who are doing the same thing as I do, not one person has had the same bad experience.

[entseo]

Re: Prevented From Trading by MOJ Because They Did Not Understand What I Do

Amethyst, I'm tempted to send you the OFT Maladministration Claim (and their various ripostes) as a PDF attachment so that you can see for yourself the grotesqueness of their incompetence which I could never fully describe myself - but I'm not allowed to because of the gagging order. Or am I, because they are no more?

So tempting....

[Amethyst]

Re: Prevented From Trading by MOJ Because They Did Not Understand What I Do

Go for your life, admin@legalbeagles.info - it won't go any further and might help with some thoughts on what action you can take to correct matters.